On The Cost of Surgery for the Self-Employed Working Poor

My experience with the cost of surgery for an on-the-job injury while self-employed may be typical for the working poor who do not live within a theoretical framework.

The injury was in June of 2007, the hernia surgery in January of 2010. The charges for a four hour day surgery came to about 14,000 dollars--a bit steep for laproscopic surgery. I just got a phone call from a 'recovery center' in Anchorage claiming another 900 dollar bill for a physician I hadn't heard of. The surgery was in Juneau.

The medical coverage is good, fast and effective. It is also beyond the range of those poor self-employed Americans without corporate or government scale income.

I got the hernias while self-employed roofing. The government wants taxes paid on the earnings of the self-employed without insurance, even though the medical costs for that year were about triple the earnings. The I.R.S. almost always wants a flat ten percent regardless of expenses--thats the way it is. Wtihout regular deductions for social security, medicare and such they want money in a lump sum. One earns less than the standard deductable, has triple the medical costs, and the government still wants its ten per cent-year after year

Well, I had bought a new remote property in Alaska to build a home on, yet traded that to pay half the surgery cost. Forced to work to get out of Juneau after surgery at something with lifting. I picked up an end of a 30 gallon bin full of water and fish and got a heck of a strain. Workers are rather disposable in America. Another hernia without another home to trade would leave we short. The work in Juneau is mostly just for government workers and some corporate employment in tourist related things. Though the Juneau royal family politician-Dennis Egan-says things are good here, they aren't. The population and economic facts rarely change much because its a city of government workers in isolation.

At least the government takes care of those global corporations and broadcast powers allocating resources to concentrate wealth. Its good to know the government follows the Roman pattern of decadence and probably will collapse eventually with plenty of hell even for the bureaucrats and rich. Then, the barbarians over the border will probably have national health coverage and wear Gucci shoes, the U.S.A. will be invaded by corporate bill collectors and free enterprise absolutely impossible for noncorporate entities.

The tax credits the government has been giving to the middle class with corporate jobs to buy homes does nothing at all for the poor seeking to buy land to put a tent on. If one owns property then at least own might build a fair hut for a low cost instead of paying corporate for a rental (if one hasn't got a hernia or three).